


Meet The Neighbors

by morkfrompork



Category: Neighbors (1981)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2020-05-19 07:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19352050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morkfrompork/pseuds/morkfrompork
Summary: Earl Keese leads a boring life with his wife at the end of their boring street, and he likes it that way. One evening, a new couple moves into the other house on the street. Earl's gut feeling tells him to keep his distance, but his endless need to be polite drives him towards them. A mistake that may cost him his sanity and even his life.





	1. Chapter 1: The New Neighbors

The smoke from Enid’s cigarette smelled like boredom. Everything smelled like boredom in his house. It was just the way Earl liked it and the way he strove to keep it. He worked to stay bored and he dug his routine into a cozy little rut to stay bored. Bored was good and safe and decent. 

The street they lived on was boring and their old neighbors, the Warrens, were boring. The Keeses and the Warrens never associated all that much, but they survived with a polite distance between them. Mrs. Warren moved out when her husband died and she hadn’t contacted the Keeses afterwards. Earl didn’t mind, of course. Mrs. Warren had been a good, quiet neighbor, but no neighbors were always better than neighbors. It was the reason he had bought a house on a street with only one other present. At the most, he’d only have to live with one other family sharing the street. It allowed for a quiet existence.

Earl changed the channel and looked over at Enid. She was as boring as he was, but she never seemed to quite relish that fact as much as he did. She lived her life and he lived his. Besides the fact that they shared a bed and had raised a daughter together, they had about as much in common as two assigned college roommates. They never said much more than what was necessary to each other; the same polite distance they had kept between the Warrens and themselves.

Earl flicked to the next channel a second time. Enid still didn’t look up from her newspaper. She was about as interested in what the television had to say as he was. But she had something else to occupy her time with. He was simply sitting in the armchair and trying to pass the time before one of them rose to start dinner. 

A third channel switch. A third depressing chain of events described by the anchor who sounded as bored as the two people watching. Earl sipped from his wine glass, if you could even call it that. It was more of a ‘rubbing alcohol with grape-like undertones’ glass. 

Enid dropped her dying cigarette into the empty bottle of wine as she stood. 

“Well, I guess it’s that time.” 

Her husband looked forward to dinner time as the one part of the evening with controlled variety, but the monotony remained constant to her. Especially after the money was starting to run lower and lower every month. What used to be steaks twice a month had turned into frozen waffles twice a week. Freezer-burnt and stale frozen waffles. It was all they could afford to have with any sort of frequency. 

“Want any help?” He asked as a formality, not because he wanted to or would have been much of a help anyway. He knew Enid would reject his offer, but had she accepted, he would have gotten up and helped. It was only polite, even if there was no substance to it; the quickest way to describe Earl’s morals. As predicted, she shook her head as she stood.

“Found a terrific recipe for capon in the Times today. Takes two minutes.”

Earl hardly moved when she strode past him, through the front entry and the dining room into the kitchen. He couldn’t care less about what was being shown on the television, but it was what he paid attention to in the evenings. It was the only thing that really made any noise in the house. His attention was only drawn from it when he heard the slam of a vehicle door outside. 

_A visitor?_

_This time of night?_

He set down his glass and moved across the living room to the window that occupied most of the north wall, moving one of the draperies over with a hooked finger to see outside. Lights were on in what he knew to be the abandoned Warren place and a U-Haul attached to a small truck parked outside it. No sign of any people or any movement. 

_It’s already dark out. They’re just moving in now?_

“Enid! Someone’s moving into the Warren place!” He called, never taking his eyes off the house. The lights on the porch turned on, but there didn’t seem to be anyone inside the house. 

“So?” She was as uninterested with his news as the stuff she had read in the paper and listened to on the television. 

_Strange time to be moving in, is all._

If Earl had been thinking clearly, or even at all, he would have dropped the subject there. He would have listened to the unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach, closed the draperies and gone back to his boring life in front of the television. He would have politely kept his distance the way he did with the Warrens and forgotten he even had new neighbors. He would have sat down to dinner with his wife and continued the life he had worked hard to achieve. As we will come to know, this is not what Earl did that evening...


	2. Chapter 2: The Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Earl meets the first of his new neighbors.

“Maybe we should ask them in for a drink? Tonight being their first night, and all…” Earl suggested, picking up the empty bottle of wine as he made his way to the kitchen to join his wife. The common statement of a man trying his utmost to be polite. He’d never said such a thing regarding the Warrens and, in all his life, had never been offered the same courtesy. 

Earl wasn’t quite sure why he suggested it. Perhaps it was because of the time between when Mrs. Warren had moved out and the current day, or perhaps it was the pity at the sight of their meagre belongings. Such a large house, about to be populated with as many people as could fit into that small truck and as much furniture as could fit into that tiny U-Haul. 

“Tomorrow will be fine,” Enid replied from the kitchen, lighting another cigarette as her only company during the preparations for dinner. Not that she minded. In another time, years ago, she had probably loved Earl, and he had loved her, too. How long that period was, she could not say. Only that it was long enough for them to get married and have a daughter together, but hardly a second longer. The lack of love had slowly dissolved into resentment over the years and in a few more, would most likely be hatred. She hadn’t reached that part yet, but Earl could sense it was coming. Especially when he entered the room and she stiffened. 

He bent down into the fridge to retrieve a second bottle of chilled wine and replace the empty. “Tomorrow isn’t tonight, you know? It would be nice.”

“Plenty of time to be nice. You don’t have to push it.”

Earl would have retaliated; wanted to retaliate. Wanted to question why his wife was acting so cold towards their new next-door companions. The only thing stopping him was the sound of the trash cans outside the kitchen side door being knocked over. 

_Racoons? This time of year?_

He wove around the edge of the counter and the kitchen table, setting down the bottle of wine beside Enid before stepping out through the side door to investigate. A couple of steps down and around the side of the house revealed something worse than racoons: the new neighbors had a dog. 

In the early evening darkness, Earl couldn’t tell exactly what kind of dog it was. A German shepherd, most likely. What he could tell was that it was rummaging through the contents of a knocked-over trash can. His trash can. 

“Get out of here,” he hissed, stepping closer to the dog. “Go back home.” 

It didn’t stop digging for a few seconds, but eventually looked up at Earl with the recognition of a dog who had been called by its name. It didn’t move beyond lifting its head. Not even to bare its teeth, like Earl almost expected of it. He’d had a nasty bout with another dog in his younger years that had made him wary of them and almost dislike them and as a result, treated every dog he came across like a disliked co-worker, of which he had plenty. 

“Go back home, I said,” he repeated, taking another step towards the dog. It still didn’t move. Only stared directly at Earl. Perhaps it was the light from the kitchen window reflecting, or maybe it was because Earl was standing close enough to it, but for a split moment, he could almost swear the dog’s bright blue eyes were glowing ever so slightly. Just a small aura around them. On the next step closer, the dog turned and sprinted into the darkness, running through the hedges that separated the Keeses’ house from the old Warren place. Satisfied with his effort, Earl also retreated from the battlefield back into his house.

“They’ve got a dog,” he informed Enid, who was in the process of setting the table for dinner. 

“Kalinqashe, the dog spirit, is swift and faithful,” she murmured in reply. A leftover piece of trivia from her days studying Native American art. Knowledge to her, trivia to the rest of the world and particularly to the man she married who couldn’t see the use in it. 

“I don’t care. I don’t want it in the garden digging up my bulbs.” Earl picked up the bottle of wine from the counter where he left it and started to make his way back to the living room, where, whether the neighbors would be invited or not, he was planning to drink it. He was gone before he could hear Enid grumble under her breath; “who’d want your bulbs?” She punctuated the question by swigging the remainder of her most recent glass of wine. 

Earl’s most prominent thought upon returning to his recliner was uncorking the bottle of wine and pouring himself another glass. There truly wasn’t enough wine in the world to make his life in the house exciting. Hardly enough to make it sufficiently exciting to endure. But he could still try. It was at least worth an attempt. 

Thoughts of the dog outside kept his mind busy as he sipped and stared at the television. Every little noise was the possibility of it returning. It wasn’t the mess it could create in his yard that troubled him, but the dog itself. Something about it was truly off-putting. The way it stared? The way it didn’t move until he was close enough to slap it?

No.

What bothered Earl Keese most about that dog were its eyes. Electric blue; a vivid shade he’d never even seen in a picture of a dog before. And _glowing_. He’d convinced himself in the moment that he was making up nonsense, but as the seconds ticked past and doubts on both sides of his mind screamed, he became at once more and less certain of what he had seen. No dog had eyes that colour. And no dog had eyes that glowed.

And then the doorbell rang.


	3. Chapter Three: Ramona

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Earl greets his second visitor

The second ring of the doorbell followed shortly after the first. It was the calm and collected, but certainly impatient ringing of a visitor who knew the occupants were home and couldn’t be convinced otherwise. No matter how much Earl would have liked to do exactly that. Logically, the only person it could possibly be was the new neighbor, or even a collection of new neighbors, who would have shown up before he had the chance to invite them over; a social faux pas he hadn’t intended on making this evening. 

In a quiet life like the one he and Enid led, appearances were really the only thing Earl had the energy or ability to care about anymore. It was a trivial and shallow thing to care about, but that was what made it so easy. That was what made it so difficult to leave his chair and turn on the light in the front entry to illuminate his visitor’s or visitors’ faces. 

Somehow, Earl succeeded in the endeavor, cautiously turning on the light and even more cautiously unlocking the front door. These were people who moved into a house after it was already dark out; who knew what could be waiting for him on the other side? He expected any number of evil-looking people on his porch: murderers, thugs, drug dealers, criminals of all sorts. He didn’t expect a wave of long, blonde hair. Nor did he expect a young, rather beautiful woman with bright blue eyes, staring right back at his own. Like she knew where to stare. 

This woman had none of the self-consciousness or nerves that generally came with meeting a new person. Not even the desire to impress. Just from the expression she had on when Earl opened the door a crack to survey his visitor, she held herself with the knowledge that she had already impressed him. The poise of someone who had the upper hand and was completely aware of it. _Relished_ it, one might say. 

Earl opened the door the rest of the way immediately, holding back every instinct to stammer and appear awkward or nervous. The visitor had the upper hand in appearances, without which, Earl was at a loss for how to handle himself. All he had left was politeness. 

“Hello, uh… What can I do for you?” 

If his heart was beating hard enough for her to hear, she didn’t say anything on the subject. Only answered with every bit of the poise he expected of her.

“Anything you like.” 

She had the voice of a woman much younger than his wife. With much more life left to her. Though he should have expected it, actually hearing this woman speak set Earl’s mouth dry and his mind blank. 

“The question is… what do you want in return?” 

She took a few steps forward. Not menacingly, or threateningly in any way. These were seductive steps. Earl had seen them in the trashy late-night movies he’d watch if Enid had him sleep on the couch after a disagreement. But that was just his imagination. Right? 

He swallowed and loosened his tie, praying he didn’t look as flushed as he felt. He was probably a little drunk; that had to be it. He’d drunk a little too much wine and his mind was running away with him as a result. She was simply a nice, polite girl who’d moved in next door and had come to introduce herself. The fact that he could see the upper curves of her chest meant nothing except that it was probably a warm evening. 

“Hi. I’m Ramona. I just moved in next door.” The few steps she took forwards, including a few into the entry should have set Earl’s teeth on edge. They would have had it been a guest he knew prior. For some reason, when he looked at Ramona, manners simply didn’t hold much weight anymore. Was it her beauty? Her soft-spoken, seductive demeanor? Perhaps maybe even the sheer shock Earl had received from seeing her instead of some large criminal? He couldn’t be certain, but something in her eyes made him want to trust her immediately.

“Oh, really?”

“Really.”

She walked past him into the living room, completely inviting herself in. On the inside, Earl was kicking himself for not speaking up at her brazen actions. Inviting oneself inside a complete stranger’s home was not only impolite, but rude, in many circumstances. But he said nothing. Allowed her to break eye contact with him as he closed the door behind the two of them. Seemingly, once she turned away, the fluttery warmth in Earl’s chest became a sternness, a desire to inform his guest that no matter which house she moved into, one couldn’t simply waltz in without being invited. At the same time, his need for decorum kept his mouth shut. Kept him simply watching as Ramona pulled her shawl from her shoulders, revealing even more skin.


End file.
